Predicting What Will Win Best Picture In 2014, Way Too Early

It's already won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and has been selected for the prestigious New York Film Festival, where a barrage of past Academy Award-winners like Life of Pi, The Descendants, and The Artist have played. Of course fest credentials aren’t enough to win Oscar… but maybe the directing duo of Joel and Ethan Coen is. Aside from their winning record at the Oscars, the Coen Bros are renowned for their distinctive portraits of American life, be it in the cold and brutal crimes of a Minnesota small town in Fargo or the plight of a garrulous con man in the 1930’s South via O Brother, Where Art Thou, or the gruff lawmen of the wild west in True Grit. This time, the Coens train their deft eye for detail and dark humor on the story of an aspiring folk musician in the 1960s Greenwich Village scene. The first trailer left us aching for more, and with the Coens as writer-directors and a cast that includes Oscar-nominated ingénue Carey Mulligan, recurring Coen collaborator John Goodman, and rising young star Oscar Isaac this period piece about flawed souls and the art that drives them seems destined to sing to Oscar.